What’s New About Business Pages?

Not a lot, which is a good thing because sometimes it’s tricky to implement social media advice. Basically, business pages make three major changes on Pinterest:

1. Website Verification

Pinterest will add this nifty checkmark to your profile to verify that you own the site. Verification will most likely impact search results in Pinterest, making your brand easier to find.

2. New Buttons

Adding to the Pin It button, Pinterest now offers a Follow Button that will allow users to follow your account. Go ahead and try it: Portent, Inc.

Pinterest also unveiled a Profile Widget and a Board Widget that displays 30 of your latest pins in an iframe that links to your business page.

3. Access to New Features

Pinterest is a little vague about what these features are, but my guess is that Pinterest analytics must be right around the corner. In the mean time, I highly recommend pingraphy for scheduling and tracking pins.

How Do We Sign Up For a Business Page?

If you already have a Pinterest account, it’s not too difficult to create a business page by verifying your website. Here’s a quick walkthrough:

Log into your profile and visit Pinterest’s business page. If you don’t have a page yet, you can now join Pinterest as a business.

To finalize the process, you’ll need to verify your website, which you can do by downloading a Pinterest verification file and uploading it to your site’s server.

Uploading the Verification File

For many of us, this is where we hit the wall for our knowledge of the Internet. To upload the file, you’ll need FTP access for your website. Since some server setups are complicated (especially for those of us that don’t know what we’re doing), make sure that you’re in the right folder when you upload.

You’re looking for the docroot – it should be browsable at your domain without any subfolders (www.yourdomain.com/pinterest-file.html). Most hosting companies use “httpdocs” but it might also say “wwwroot” or some other variation.

Once the file is uploaded, check for the file in your browser. In our case, http://www.eigene-homepage-erstellen.net/pinterest-b107e.html. It should look like this:

If all went well, visit the verification page again and click to complete the process.

If you have any trouble converting your Pinterest Business page, don’t be shy. Leave a comment or send @Portent or me (@SocialDoug) a tweet and we’ll get back to you.

The post Claim Your New Pinterest Business Page Today appeared first on Portent.

You can check out my slidedeck below. I’ll add a link to the recorded version of my presentation later today. If you’re interested in any of the sources in my presentation, here’s a link to my complete Pinterest link bundle.

Next Month

Tune in for our next free Portent webinar in September. Elizabeth Marsten will be speaking about Google Shopping and Product Listing Ads (PLAs) just in time for the holiday season. Get in the know for October and beyond as Google retires the “free” product feed format on Google Shopping and moves to pay to play listings. We’ll go over best practices on how to set up in AdWords, Google Merchant Center and Google Analytics, lesser known details and tips for success.

The post Possibilities of Pinterest Webinar SlideDeck appeared first on Portent.

Terms of Service and Copyright Concerns

Fears over Pinterest’s Terms of Service have been a continuing hot-topic, and Pinterest took action by announcing changes to their TOS at the end of March. While this has eased anxieties over the selling of content, copyright concerns (a debate with differing viewpoints) remain.

Even if you’re worried about these copyright concerns, you can still enjoy Pinterest by uploading your own original content. Although the website’s “About” page states “Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web,” the new Terms of Service seem to take a minor step back, and uploading your own content is a great way to organize and share all the beautiful things you find in your real life. It’s certainly a bit more time consuming, but if you think it would limit the types of pins you could potentially upload, you’d be mistaken.

Pin It

First though, it will be helpful to learn how to pin from your phone.

Pinning from Your Phone

All of the content ideas below will require some form of a camera, so pinning from your camera phone is a “duh!” option. Here are two guides for doing just that:

• How to Pin Images from Your iPhone
• Pinterest for Android? Not yet, but there are ways to get your fix

Pins for Every Category

• Architecture: Chances are you live in or a near a large city, and there’s usually plenty of interesting architecture if you look around, up or maybe even down.
• Art, Design, DIY & Crafts, Photography, Print & Posters: I’m clumping these together, but it’s easy to find something for each category. For example, design is all around us, and when you spot a sticky note man, you might as well pin that awesomeness. Moreover, you’ve probably already been keeping a board full of projects, so go ahead and blog about it and pin your results. If you’re worried about not getting credit after pinning your photography, add some watermarks.

Pin It

• Cars & Motorcycles: Keep track of clever license plates you see. Or simply pin your own photos of vehicles you like. Just don’t snap pictures while actually driving.
• Education: A great way for camp leaders and teachers to share student projects.
• Film, Music & Books: Keep track of the films you’ve been to by pinning your movie stubs. Pin photos from concerts. Use Photoshop to make your favorite book quotes pop. Endless options.
• Fitness: Upload charts to keep track of the food you’re eating, how much you’re exercising or even how much weight you’re losing.
• Food & Drink: This category is ideal for uploading original content. Pin and share your own recipes for others to try, and pin images of the beautiful desserts and meals you eat.

• Gardening: Find inspiration at your local nursery and create a board. Show off your own garden and create inspiration for others.
• Geek, Technology: It’s not like you weren’t snapping photos of all those costumes at Comic-Con, right? Even better, make an awesome Rube Goldberg machine and show it off to the world like this kid.

• Hair & Beauty: Your hair looks amazing every single day. But on that day it looks extra amazing, each repin is a compliment you deserve.
• History: If you’re into family ancestry, a Pinterest board can be used as a wonderful tool to keep a record of your relatives. Or maybe you have a hobby in which you collect some historic stuff that would be prone to show up on “Pawn Stars” – perfect.
• Holidays: Another wide-open category. Pin the Easter eggs your kids created. Pin your Halloween costume. Pin your house at Christmas when it features over a bajillion lights, Mr. Griswold.

• Home Décor, My Life, Women’s Apparel, Men’s Apparel, Products, Wedding & Events: Another group that’s easily clumped together. Show off the rooms in your apartment or house (or go to Ikea and pretend you live there). Pin your favorite outfits to show off your style. Upload photos of products when you go shopping to make a wish list. Pin photos from your friend’s wedding or add photos from your own.
• Humor: The perfect spot for your memes, you creative genius.
• Kids: Forget scrapbooking – that takes forever. Keep your kid’s memories on Pinterest. No glitter involved. And soon you should be able to make the board private.
• Outdoors, Science & Nature, Travel & Places: A good place to pin memories from your camping trips and hikes, the time you went to the zoo and all your vacations.
• People: Remember that time you stalked randomly ran into Edward James Olmos from “Battlestar Galactica” and your friend asked him to take a picture with you because you were too shy to ask?
• Pets: I don’t recommend going out and buying a puppy just for a Pinterest board. However, your Pinpuff score is going to shoot through the roof with all those repins.

Pin It

• Sports: Did you win a championship in high school? Did you rush the field in college? Did you win the Super Bowl on Madden for Xbox? Pin it.

What other great ideas do you have for pinning original content? Are you happy with the direction Pinterest has taken with their latest Terms of Service? I want to hear what you think in the comments.

The post How to Upload More Original Content to Pinterest: Pins for 31 Categories appeared first on Portent.